


Fallen

by aravenwood



Series: Febuwhump '19 [14]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, John Feels, Poor John, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 09:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood
Summary: Watching Rodney disappear over the edge of a cliff was by far the most terrifying thing John had ever seen in the Pegasus galaxy.





	Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, again! You know, I sat down to write for this prompt and started off with a nice fluffy idea for a completely different fandom (Hawaii 50, in case anyone was wondering). But I changed my mind and thus this was born. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Watching Rodney disappear over the edge of a cliff was by far the most terrifying thing John had ever seen in the Pegasus galaxy. It had happened so suddenly that McKay hadn't had time to yell - there had barely even been time for his smile to falter as the ground beneath his feet crumbled and he was sent tumbling down two hundred feet to the ground.

John fell to his knees and covered his mouth with his hands, staring numbly at the space where McKay had been standing only moments before. He couldn't...he couldn't believe it. McKay wasn't...he couldn't be dead. He just couldn't. But...200 feet. No one could survive that, not even McKay with his surprising affinity for surviving even the most dire of situations.

He had to be gone.

Bile rose in John's throat as he imagined how afraid McKay must have been. It would have been a quick death, but not quick enough. There would have been time for him to panic, to think "oh god I'm going to die" before it actually happened. Maybe he'd tried desperately to save himself, tried to twist in the air or claw at the sheer rock face for a handhold. Torn his hands up in the process, but he wouldn't have cared because he had to live, had to save himself because as he fell there was nothing that anyone else could do.

"Oh god," John whispered behind his hands as tears started to fall. He felt strangely numb even as the first sob tore itself from his chest. How could this have happened? How could he have let McKay die after everything they'd gone through together? The Genii, the Wraith, countless angry townspeople who had tried to kill them...after all of that, gravity was the thing to kill Dr Rodney McKay, renowned physicist.

In any other situation John would have laughed at the irony. But as it was, he only let out another harsh sob and folded in on himself.

"John!"

John ignored the voice. It wasn't important, nothing was important right now because his best friend was dead and all he'd done was watch. Realistically he knew that there was nothing he could have done because it had happened so fast. But that didn't stop his mind from offering up harsh accusations that it was all his fault; that he should have known the ground would collapse; that he shouldn't have let McKay come on the mission in the first place; that he shouldn't have let him come on any mission.

"John!"

His entire body was shaking. Shock, his mind offered, but that just felt like an excuse.

"John, are you there?"

The voice was louder, more irate, and John forced his head up. The clearing was empty, but the voice was coming from somewhere close. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and clambered to his feet, legs shaking and threatening to buckle beneath him. "Hello?" he called weakly, his voice cracked and broken and filled with tears.

"John?"

His legs took him to the edge of the cliff. His head forced him to look down. Down where McKay's broken body would be, surrounded by blood and twisted in unnatural positions. He had to see it, he had to know...

McKay stared back at him, blue eyes wide and afraid as he dangled from the edge of the cliff by his fingertips. He was drenched in sweat and shaking with the effort of holding himself up, but his eyes widened as he looked at John. "John? Oh thank god, I thought you'd gone. Pull me up, I can't hang around all day!"

John's legs finally collapsed beneath him and he fell once more to his knees, but this time it wasn't in despair but rather in relief. As he lowered himself onto his stomach and hung an arm over the edge of the cliff for McKay to take, he was grinning even as yet more tears fell. "You're alive," he choked. "Oh thank god, oh thank god."

"Yes, yes, yes. Now pull me up!"

John laughed at the irritation in McKay's voice, the voice he'd thought he would never hear again. "Happy to," he said.

When McKay was back on solid ground, John dragged him away from the edge and wrapped him in a tight hug, a gesture McKay returned with equal force. They clung to each other, each shaking violently from the close call. John buried his face in McKay's hair, and if McKay noticed it growing wet with tears, he didn't say a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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